The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Beat While Blindfolded

An intrepid speedrunner takes on The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past while blindfolded, managing to beat the entirety of the game in just over nine hours.

Speedrunners are always trying to find new ways to challenge themselves, and this typically involves using an unusual object as a controller or finding another creative way to make a difficult game even harder to complete. This week, a speedrunner named ParisianPlayer has managed to beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past in just over nine hours, a task which he completed while blindfolded.

Beating A Link To The Past in such a time is impressive enough, and the speedrunner admitted that he had estimated the task would take around 12 hours to complete in one sitting. He was inspired to perform the blindfolded run after witnessing a similarly blindfolded run of Donkey Kong Country, which made him want to join an elite section of speedrunners called “The Blindfold Brotherhood”. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what one has to do to be granted entry into the elite club – and ParisianPlayer did just that.

Blindfolded runs aren’t new to the speedrunning scene, and in recent times we’ve seen everything from Destiny‘s Crota to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out beaten by blindfolded players. In fact, the absence of sight is something that made waves in the Zelda franchise last year when a blind gamer finally beat Ocarina of Time after 5 years of slowly progressing through the title using audio cues alone.

As dedicated speedrun enthusiasts know, there are many categories of speedrun out there. For example, an “Any%” run doesn’t take into account how much of the game the player actually beat, so long as they reach the end of the game. A “No Major Glitch” run means that the speedrunner doesn’t activate any glitches that teleport them ahead of the game, or grant them powerful weapons far earlier than intended. For his run, ParisianPlayer did a unique “All Bosses/All Glitches” blindfolded run, which was the first of its kind for A Link To The Past.

The dedicated gamer had put in a month’s worth of tactical preparation and two months of practicing the difficult run before he felt ready to stream his endeavor in a live environment, but it paid off in the end – although his stream only garnered about 5,000 views in total. While it remains to be seen if another gamer will jump out and beat this record next week (which does happen on occasion), for now ParisianPlayer can rest easy knowing he’s got the top – and only – score for such a difficult run.

Interested gamers can take a look at the entire run for themselves here.

What do you think about this blind folded speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, Ranters?